Knitwit! Purler! Ornament! Tweak!
by stella8h8chang
Summary: A set of giant drabbles dedicated to all the 'knitwits' in the Potterverse who use knitting as therapy. You’re my inspiration. Chapter four, 'Albus' Socks', finally now up!
1. Luna's Scarves

**Chapter 1: Luna's scarves**

Luna Lovegood takes up knitting when she is six.

"Luna, dear, do try to stop biting your nails," says her father. "If you swallow too many fingernails, horns will grow out of your head. They're made of the same material, you know."

Her mother, who has always believed in actions rather than words, puts a pair of knitting-needles and some yarn into her daughter's hands. The simple muggle technology works like magic on Luna's unfortunate habit. While her hands are busy, her nerves are calm.

The first thing she makes is a scarf. It is full of holes from dropped stitches, lumps from changes in tension, and resembles a trapezoid rather than a rectangle. But Luna wears it proudly everywhere. People say, "What a clever little girl you are, knitting that scarf all by yourself!"

But the people are not the reason that Luna loves her scarf so much. What fascinates her is that it is made from all the colours of the rainbow, that she was able to watch it grow to be five feet long, and that nobody else in the world has a scarf exactly like it.

Luna makes more. One from special stripy wool that is a mixture of yellow, orange and red that makes the scarf look as if it is on fire. One from feathery wool that fluffs up to twice its size. One from wool that is softer than a puffskein's fur. Eventually the day comes when her mother asks her if she would like to try something else, like a hat.

But Luna doesn't want to try anything else. The wonderful thing about scarves she sees is that there is no need to follow a pattern. From the wool, to the number of stitches, to the rows of knits and purls – it's all her own design.

* * *

_**A/N: **I haven't been doing a lot of writing lately. This is because half of my real-life friends, rather inconsiderately, decided to be born around July, and I have spent most of my three weeks making knitted goods for their birthday presents. Also, I am hyperactive and cannot sit in front of a TV without either knitting or pulling some awkward yoga poses – you can imagine what my parents prefer._

_Oh yeah. I - don't - own - Harry - Potter. Please don't sue, just review._


	2. Molly's Jumpers

**Chapter 2: Molly's Jumpers  
**

As long as Molly Prewett Weasley can remember, the clicking of knitting-needles has always been present in her family home.

But then she leaves for the Burrow, and stows the needles in a dusty linen cupboard. She marries her Hogwarts sweetheart shortly after their graduation, as neither sees the point in waiting. On one hand, Arthur and she feel this sense of completeness – that they were simply _made_ for each other. On the other hand, the air is thick with fear, uncertainty and – they hate to admit it – _death_.

No matter what side she chooses – even if she chooses not to take a side – Molly is trapped in this war. While Arthur works full-time at the Ministry, making any insurgent work impossible, her brothers, Gideon and Fabian, are dedicated members of the "Order of the Phoenix". She has seen them with bruised faces, bloodied knuckles and torn sleeves. She has never contemplated the potential of magic to maim like this, and – she hates to admit it – perhaps even _kill_. Her eyes are fixed on the dining-room clock. Even though her brothers do not call The Burrow home, she has managed to bewitch it to show their movements as well as Arthur's and her own. But it has been little help or comfort – all four hands seem permanently stuck on "Mortal Peril".

And yet it continues to tick, as the pendulum swings back and forth.

_Tick, tick, tick._

She wishes she could turn back time, and sit in a dining-room where the most piercing...

...

..._piercing..._

...

...she has a flash of inspiration, and flies up the stairs to the linen-cupboard, taking out the charmed needles. What will she knit?

_What will muddle the ticking sounds for the longest period of time? _

There is not quite enough wool in her cupboard for a blanket. But there is enough for a _jumper_.

* * *

_**A/N: **Inspiration strikes in all the most inconvenient places, I swear. This time it was in a tutorial on recreational drug use. Thank you to **Dr. Shanty, ShadowMoonDancer, WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot, HermioneRose and stefanie51** for their reviews on the last chapter! Sorry this one has been so long in the brewing. On a brighter note, I've made 2 hats in the past week. So guess whose knitting I'll be writing about next? Random note - oh my god, Rach 3 is really hot. I mean Rach 2 is the hottest piano concerto, in my opinion, but Rach 3 is not far off.**  
**_


	3. Hermione's Hats

**Chapter 3: Hermione's Hats  
**

Hermione Granger consistently comes first in all her exams at Hogwarts for her first four years. Now that fifth year is on the horizon, it does not look that this pattern will be interrupted any time soon, despite the oncoming OWLs, a steady boyfriend and the current tensions in the Wizarding World.

She should be proud of her brains - but she isn't. Well at least not all of the time.

She knows she can study, but sometimes she wonders if she can do anything else that's useful. Things that normal fifteen-year-old girls can do. Firstly, she can't cook – the Mother's Days at her house make up an A-Z of Kitchen Disasters. Adding too much sugar, burning toast, cakes that collapse, dry muffins, even exploding casserole dishes, and of course, under-cooking, over-cooking, and everything in between. Viktor teases her about it all the time, with good reason – all his friends say that the best place you can eat in Bulgaria is at his house, when it's his turn to make dinner.

She could never do sport – her grades for Phys. Ed at school were like a _Mills and Boon_ on a shelf of _Penguin Classics_. Her father tried to make her feel better about her ability to confuse her left foot with her right by joking that she'd make an excellent dentist or doctor one day ("_All our anatomy diagrams are the wrong way around!_")

She will never be able to do draw – stick figures were always sufficient for science classes. She's just about tone-deaf; every recorder lesson she was forced to take as a seven-year-old added another chapter to her epic musical tragedy. And her attempts at sewing read like _What Not To Do with a Needle and Thread_.

They're part of the reason why she founded "S.P.E.W." last year. It wasn't only due to her downright outrage at the enslavement going on under their noses; a number of well-written essays would have expressed that far more eloquently. It was also part of her great plot to show the world that Miss Granger can conquer more than exams.

Now, with the box of S.P.E.W. badges still full, she decides to take matters into her own hands. She'll show them by freeing the house-elves one at a time! By Conjuring up some clothes...

...But she reads up on Conjuring spells and is stumped – even when she returns to school and is allowed to perform magic, there is not a chance she is going to be able to cast them. She orders _Handy Witch Crafts_ for later, but for now, she resolves to make the clothes by muggle means. She won't go anywhere near a sewing machine, and the idea of tediously forming chains with a crochet needle does not appeal to her. So even though it's the middle of summer, she vows to learn how to knit. Even senile old women can knit – surely she, with an average of 99.95 per cent in all her theory exams – can master the craft.

She gets the idea of hats from the photo of Viktor on her desk.

Sometimes it feels so good to be just an ordinary fifteen-year-old girl.

* * *

_**A/N:** Unfortunately, the only things in my defence for the one-month wait are my exams and perhaps the length of this chapter...thanks to** Aeshan, Dr.Shanty, SaintRidley, RedCloakedMaiden** and **DangerousDiamondDarling **for reviewing Molly's chapter!_


	4. Dumbledore's Socks

_A/N: When I left FFNet last year, despite it being a gradual process, it was not a planned one. Things in real life simply snowballed one after another. But I feel as if I can't really leave the site fully behind (although this will inevitably happen soon) without completing what I left hanging, so I'm back for a bit. I don't think "Shipwrecked" will ever be finished because there isn't much point to it (they edited the Character list) but I will try, with all my heart, to give "Tempus" what it deserves – some kind of ending. _

_

* * *

_**Chapter 4: Dumbledore's socks**

Although there are very few types of magic that elude Albus Dumbledore, it is the simpler ones, often dismissed as "fake" that enchant him the most. Music, for example, which can hold a roomful of people hypnotized in their seats. Muggle magic tricks, which generally display more creativity than several sixth-year Transfiguration essays put together. Or knitting. There is nothing quite like transforming something akin to a ball of string into an intricate fabric of lace or cables with nothing but two metal rods and your bare hands.

Though many call him wise, he knows he will never truly deserve that title, primarily because of his sentimentality. When he puts on the mittens which his mother made him years ago, he can sense her...spirit?...coming close to his, as clichéd, shallow and unwise as it sounds.

Kendra Dumbledore taught all three of her children how to knit, as she did not think skills such as cooking or handcrafting should remain some sort of secret women's knowledge. Of course, after Ariana's accident, it was no longer safe to let her handle sharp objects, and once Aberforth began mixing with boys his age, he decided that he preferred duelling, so Albus was the only one who progressed beyond garter stitch.

Some young boys hide magazines of questionable content under their beds. As a teenager, Albus stashed there a sizable amount of yarn and several dozen knitting needles. At that time, he feared people would think him simple or homely, when he was in fact burning with ambition.

Today, he devotes a closet to his collection, where the yarn is arranged in rows by fiber type (alpaca, wool, cashmere, cotton, goat) and in columns by colour, so that a sort of rainbow is formed.

It is a pity, he thinks, that people ignore the simple pleasures in life, like squeezing a ball of yarn between one's fingers, watching the sun rise, or licking an ice-cream cone as slowly as possible, just because reading thick books seems more intellectual and therefore more worthwhile. He has long given up pretending to be an academic snob – he knows that the way he shuns elitism and embraces the "low" brands him at the very least, an eccentric, but somehow this is better. Because, as some famous muggle once said, it is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.

Every Christmas, Albus sends a pair of thick socks to Aberforth, as if the woollen fabric could somehow magically patch up their relationship. But this "warm gesture" has never been acknowledged, much less returned.

Still, he lives in hope that there are forms of magic that cannot be explained through reason. Knitting, music or love. They can create things of beauty – socks with cables weaving in and out of each other, songs that quicken your pulse, or moments that take your breath away. And yet they can also be responsible for quite the opposite – hideous objects worthy only of frogging, or harmonies that make your ears bleed...

...or wasted hours, dark deeds and foolish choices that you will spend several lifetimes regretting.

_Fin._


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